


The Way Clear

by greenapricot



Series: Phantoms in the Early Dark [2]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Epilogue, M/M, more happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 16:42:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14476887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/pseuds/greenapricot
Summary: This is the first time Laura’s seen the two of them together since she popped in to check on James in hospital. James had been asleep then, and Robbie, having just returned from the cafeteria, wasn’t holding his hand. An injured Sergeant and his worried Inspector, nothing more. At least that’s what he’d hoped they looked like.





	1. Friday evening

**Author's Note:**

> This is an epilogue to Phantoms in the Early Dark, so I'm not sure it will make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read that first. It takes place a week and a day after the last scene in Phantoms.
> 
> I had always intended there to be an epilogue to Phantoms, I'd even written 1400 words worth of one before I started posting the fic, but I decided it was too much in the same angsty vein as the rest of the fic and that Robbie and James deserved a bit of happiness. So, that early angsty epilogue is being reworked into my next WIP and here's something a bit more cheerful.
> 
> A million thanks to Jack for the Brit-pick and beta. All remaining mistakes are my own (and largely due to the fact that I couldn't keep myself from adding ~300 words after they looked at it).
> 
> Title paraphrased from a line in The Mountain Goat's Maybe Sprout Wings.

“My round,” James says, sliding out of the booth. Laura’s eyes track him as he crosses the pub toward the bar then she turns back to Robbie.

“He’s chipper,” she says. 

“Aye,” Robbie says, unable to suppress a grin.

“So are you,” she says, taking a sip of her gin and tonic. “In fact, you looked rather happy when I visited James in hospital. Which was a bit odd if you think about it. Just glad he was all right, were you?”

“Aye,” Robbie says again, grasping for something to distract her with. His empty pint is no help; this particular cat was never going to stay in the bag they’d put it in. 

This is the first time Laura’s seen the two of them together since she popped in to check on James in hospital. James had been asleep then, and Robbie, having just returned from the cafeteria, wasn’t holding his hand. An injured Sergeant and his worried Inspector, nothing more. At least that’s what he’d hoped they looked like. 

They haven’t spent a single night apart since Robbie found James in the attic, a fact that they’re not keeping a secret exactly, but they’re not broadcasting either. Laura, of course, has already seen right through their flimsy attempts at misdirection. She is studying him now, no doubt confirming her assumptions regardless of anything he may say to the contrary.

It’s fine, Laura knowing. Who else besides Lyn does he even have to tell such news? And Lyn, how is he going to tell Lyn? She’s always liked James, but James as his sergeant who is in cahoots with her to get her dad to eat more veg is a far cry from all the sex he and James been having this past week.

If he’s lucky, Lyn will have sussed them out the moment she looks at the two of them together, like Laura did, and Robbie won’t have to broach the subject, only explain and smooth things over. All the same, he’d wanted to keep it to themselves for a bit longer. James had too, though he hadn’t said it in so many words. Muttering something about secreting themselves away and making up for lost time, that may or may not have been a line from a poem, as his lips explored Robbie’s naked skin. 

He shouldn’t be thinking about that now, the heady feeling of James’ mouth on his, the press of James’ body against his own, the way James’ skin feels under his hands. It’s as if the prospect of almost losing James has kicked his libido into high gear, like a flame has been rekindled inside him, a flame he’d long thought extinguished for good. Now his every idle moment—and not so idle moments as well—are filled with thoughts of James, scenes from the past week played back in his mind’s eye. In his bed, on the sofa, against the kitchen worktop, in the car on the way back from doing the shopping.

It’s been lovely waking up to the warmth of another body in the bed next to him. The smell of coffee and the sounds of breakfast being prepared from the kitchen. Falling asleep to the sound of James’ breathing, James’ arm across his chest. Leaning together on the sofa of an evening and missing half the film they’re watching for snogging. Being allowed to touch, whenever he wants, and be touched. James’ new habit of running his hand from Robbie’s shoulder to lower back, or lower when they’re alone, every time he walks by; a hello, a promise. James’s follow-up to those promises in the bed that has quickly become not his, but theirs.

“It’s a good look on him,” Laura says, her smile turned indulgent. Here Robbie is having drinks with a friend, and he can’t even keep his mind on the conversation. He’s going to have to sort himself out if he’s ever going to manage to solve another case once they’re off leave and back out in the field. 

“Aye,” Robbie says for a third time. He doesn’t bother trying to keep the fondness out of his voice. Laura gives him a crooked smile. 

“Only you two,” she says, shaking her head. “It would take a blackmailer bent on revenge to get you together. I’m glad you’re both happy.” Her smile is kind, knowing, a bit cheeky. Robbie wants to ask how long she’s known, if she knew before he did. If she’d known during all the attempts they made to date over the years. Laura winks at him, as if she knows exactly what he’s thinking, then downs the last of her drink as James returns with the next round, long fingers deftly balancing the glasses despite the cast on his right arm. Robbie feels his face go hot at the memory of what those fingers were doing this morning. 

James settles back in against Robbie’s side, his posture conveying how much he wants to give Robbie a kiss of greeting but doesn’t feel he should in front of Laura. But now that she knows, now that Robbie knows she knows, there’s no reason not to. Robbie leans in and plants a kiss firmly on James’ lips. James nearly upends his pint. Laura looks nothing but pleased when he turns back to her. She raises her glass. 

“Here’s to you two kids, finally making a go of it,” she says. “Congratulations.”

James gives Robbie a sideways glance, _we’re telling now, are we_ , then raises an eyebrow at both of them, seemingly unperturbed save for the slight tinge of pink on his cheeks which matches the heat Robbie can feel in his own.

“Cheers,” James says, taking a good long drink and leaning into Robbie a bit more even as he turns to Laura. And that’s the end of it, their secret revealed and life carries on as usual. James and Laura are off discussing a new special exhibit on at the Ashmolean, making plans to see it together, as if the fact of Robbie and James sleeping together has no bearing on it.

Which it doesn’t. Sleeping with James hasn’t made Robbie any more interested in fifteenth-century manuscripts, Latin or otherwise, but he can now admit how much he enjoys watching James discuss them. The curve of his lips that gives away the extent of his excitement, though he’s trying not to show it. The way his fingers curve around his pint, stroking it, toying with the beermat, taking a sip. The line of his throat as he swallows. It’s all Robbie can do to not touch, not reach out his hand and follow the line of James’ throat down into his open shirt collar, undo a few more buttons, so he can get his hands on all the gorgeous golden skin hidden beneath.

James scratches at the short hair behind his ear and Robbie feels the echo of those fingers on his skin this morning; nerve endings coming alive, a wash of sensation as James ran his hands down Robbie’s chest, across his belly, to the crease of his hip, to his cock, already hard and waiting by the time James’ hands made their slow way there. So primed for sensation he’d gasped when James touched him, gasped and arched up into the fingers wrapping around his cock. He’d had no idea it would be like that. He’d had no idea it would continue to be like that each time, that he could at once be so familiar with James’ touch and so electrified by it, that he could be so turned on and still want more. That he could have this again and at this point in his life.

Laura and James are both looking at him, Laura’s asked him a question and he’s got no idea what it was. He feels his face go hot again. James has him thoroughly distracted without even doing anything. The thought of James’ fingers, his tongue, his mouth. Robbie shifts in his seat, his trousers becoming uncomfortable, and James shifts next to him, picks up his pint with his right hand, and puts his left on Robbie’s thigh under the table. Not going to make the situation any better. 

Laura is watching them over her gin and tonic, amused, question apparently forgotten. 

“Well, I’ll leave you two to it, then,” she says, finishing half of what’s left of her drink. “I’ve got rehearsal in less than an hour, anyway.” Laura stands and leans over to give them each a peck on the cheek. “Thursday,” she says to James as she leaves.

“Yes, ma’am,” James says. Then it’s just the two of them at the table and James’ hand moving further up Robbie’s thigh as he nonchalantly takes a sip of his pint with the other. 

“If you want me to be able to walk out of here anytime soon you’d better stop that,” Robbie says.

“Oh?” says James, the perfect picture of mock innocence.

“Cheeky sod.” 

“I _was_ looking forward to getting you home to bed,” James says, giving Robbie’s thigh another squeeze, then removing his hand.


	2. Friday evening, a bit later

“I thought you had shopping to do,” Robbie says as James pulls up in front of Robbie’s flat.

“That’s what you’d rather be doing?” They are out of coffee, but coffee is the last thing on James’ mind right now, and if he doesn’t care about the coffee there’s no way Robbie does. 

“Nah,” Robbie says, with a grin and a shake of his head and James pulls him over the handbrake into an awkward kiss. 

“Lest you forget what awaits you inside,” James says, and gets out of the car without a backward glance, knowing Robbie will be right behind. 

They have settled so comfortably into new patterns—the threads of their lives unpicked and reworked into something closer and more tactile than James could ever have hoped for—that it’s hard to believe it’s only been a week. It feels like it’s been a year and also a moment, as if time has no meaning when they’re together. It is the distortion of being on leave, having nothing with which to fill their days but each other, and blissfully so. The time before Robbie was his to reach out to whenever the mood takes him is a dim, distant past, outshone by the brilliant present. 

James knew Robbie’s flat well before, but now he can walk down the hall backwards while undressing and know the exact moment to turn across the threshold to the bedroom without bumping into the doorframe, how many steps it takes with his trousers around his ankles to get from the door to the bed, the precise angle to throw his trousers so they land on the chair in the corner.

“Tell me what you were thinking about,” James says, once they’ve made it to the bedroom, trail of discarded clothes marking their passage down the hall. The way Robbie kept watching his hands while he was making plans with Laura, the faraway look in his eyes, the hint of pink in his cheeks; James knows exactly what Robbie was thinking about, but he wants to hear him say it, loves to hear him say it. 

“What I was thinking about when?” 

“Don’t play coy with me,” James says, pulling off his socks and pants and lying back on the bed naked. He revels in the way Robbie’s eyes track across his skin, the view he’s presenting clearly distracting Robbie from removing his own trousers. “In the pub. You couldn’t concentrate on the conversation for two minutes.”

A flush spreads up Robbie’s chest and neck as he stands there, looking endearingly awkward and still unaware of his own appeal, despite James so often calling attention to it.

“Come here,” James says, holding out his hand. Robbie drops the rest of his clothes to the floor and steps over to him, clasping his hand, and James pulls Robbie down on top of him. Robbie leans in, kissing the sensitive spot behind James’ ear and James relaxes into it, turning his head to give Robbie better access and spreading his legs, settling Robbie between them, thrusting up lazily in time with Robbie’s kisses.

“What were you thinking of?” James asks again, though the question starts out as a gasp when Robbie presses his weight down against him. “In the pub.”

At first, it seems like Robbie isn’t going to answer. He goes on kissing James, moving down along his neck, biting at the junction of his neck and shoulder, across his clavicle, nipping at his shoulder, then, _oh_ , back to the spot behind his ear. 

“You,” Robbie says, into the side of James’ neck. “I was thinking about you and your bloody talented fingers, and your skin, and your lips, and the way you look with your mouth around my cock.” James gasps as Robbie moves down and takes one of his nipples into his mouth, then continues kissing across James’ chest. “You’re very distracting. I don’t know how I managed it all these years. The way you were rubbing your fingers over your pint. I couldn’t stop thinking about you touching my cock this morning. How hard you made me come. How beautiful you are when you come. How much I want you.”

“Fuck,” James says, and pulls Robbie up into a kiss, grinding up against him. Robbie moans into James’ mouth, thrusting his cock against James’, hot and hard and just this side of the right amount of friction. James wraps his legs around Robbie’s waist, adjusting the angle, and deepens the kiss, sucking on Robbie’s tongue, biting at his lower lip, until Robbie’s thrusts are no longer keeping rhythm. He’s close. Robbie is so close and James has hardly touched him. And he wants to, he wants to get his mouth on Robbie’s cock again, see how much more noise he can coax out of him, though he’s far from quiet now. 

James puts both hands on Robbie’s arse and pulls their bodies still closer together, their cocks finally perfectly aligned. Robbie’s moans grow louder, his thrusts more erratic.

“James. _Christ._ James, I—” and the rest of it is lost to more moans and Robbie’s tongue in James’ mouth, Robbie’s everything everywhere, warmth and unrestrained pleasure and James’ answering moans. Robbie collapses on top of him and James gets his hand between them, grasping his own cock, slick with Robbie’s come. Robbie starts to move off him, presumably to give him space.

“No, stay,” James says, raw and pleading as he tightens his legs around Robbie’s waist, pulling Robbie’s weight more firmly on top of himself, thrusting into his hand in the scant space between them. The angle is awkward, James’ legs around Robbie, his hand crushed between them, but he is so close and this is hardly the first time he’s tied himself up in knots over Robbie Lewis. Robbie presses his weight down onto James, saying something into his ear that James can’t make out, bites at James’ earlobe, and James’ orgasm slams into him, pleasure coursing through him in waves. He holds on, burying his face in Robbie’s neck, in the warm, solid scent of him, sucking in breath after breath as if he’s run a sprint, as if his heart is about to beat out of his chest with the sheer joy of it, until Robbie’s comforting weight grounds him back in reality.

“What you do to me,” Robbie says a minute later, sweat and come cooling between them. 

“It’s not just you,” James says, his breathing not yet quite back to normal. He keeps his legs wrapped around Robbie to stave off any ideas he may have about moving. If he could, he would stay like this indefinitely.

* * *

James wakes to soft snuffles of breath puffing against his cheek and pins and needles in his left arm and shoulder. He shifts partway out from under Robbie and waits for the rhythm of Robbie’s breath to lull him back to sleep. He lets his mind wander, contemplates the patterns of light cast on the ceiling by passing traffic, but the spell of post-coital calm has been broken. Really, it’s something of a minor miracle that he’s managed to put off focusing on the elephant in the room for nearly a week and still been able to sleep. Regular sex has had a remarkable calming effect on his constantly swirling thoughts, but that elephant is looming ever closer and they can no longer keep ignoring it.

The past week of leave has been a gift. Regardless of Eldridge, they were both due leave, but James knows full well there is no official reason for Robbie to have this week off along with him, leaving Innocent two officers short. And there is no way Innocent doesn’t know about the two of them, her indulgent smile when she told them not to show their faces in the nick for the next week was a dead giveaway.

James has no illusions that the debriefing Innocent has scheduled for Monday morning will be only about the details of the Eldridge case. There’s no getting around the fact that James is now sleeping with his boss and has no intention of stopping, and there’s no getting around the fact that Robbie can’t continue to be his boss if they are sleeping together. There’s only one solution to this problem, a solution that once filled him with dread at the mere thought of it: James can’t go on being Robbie’s sergeant. But he finds, now that he’s looking it straight in the eye from the vantage point of lying naked in Robbie’s bed, the prospect of it doesn’t seem quite so dire.

Robbie moves above him, the snuffling turns into a snort, and he rolls over all the way off James. James shifts sideways until his entire left side is pressed against Robbie and drapes his right arm over Robbie’s chest, careful not to whack him with the cast. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Robbie says. 

“Woke you up did I?”

“Aye.” 

James kisses Robbie’s shoulder and wriggles in closer to him. 

“You going to share?”

“I’m going to sit the OSPRE,” James says, before he can second guess himself. “The next test is in two months, that should be enough time to prepare.” 

Robbie sits up halfway, propping himself up on his elbow, looking down at James, both incredulous and proud. “Last time I mentioned it you nearly bit my head off.”

James shrugs against the pillow. “Things changed.”

Robbie’s look turns serious and a bit sad. “You didn’t go for Inspector before because of me.”

James shrugs again. “I couldn’t risk it, the chance that we wouldn’t see each other if we weren’t working together…” 

“James,” Robbie says, running a finger down the side of his face. James’ instinct is to turn away from that penetrating gaze, but he doesn’t. “You held your career back for me. That was never—”

“I wouldn’t have a career if it weren’t for you,” James breaks in. “I would have quit years ago.”

“James,” Robbie says again.

“I’m sorry,” James says. “I didn’t mean to put this all on you. It’s just— You were you and I couldn’t not love you. I tried, it was impossible.”

“You daft sod,” Robbie says, pulling James into his arms and kissing him thoroughly. 

When they come up for air Robbie still has a sad look around his eyes. James hates that he put that look there and that, in all probability, he will again in the future. 

“It really was all worth it, you know,” James says, even though he’s repeating himself. But if Robbie doesn’t get how truly worthwhile it all was, how grateful James is that things have turned out the way they did, he needs to make him understand. “Everything. Unquestionably. I don’t regret any of it. I’m not even sure I regret you not knowing how I felt sooner. That’s how it happened and that’s what got us here, and now that we’re here I’m not letting go.” James reaches for Robbie’s hand and intertwines their fingers. “We won’t be working as closely when I’m an inspector, but I’m okay with that as long as we have this,” he squeezes Robbie’s hand. “As long as you’re here for me to come home to at the end of the day.”

“I will be,” Robbie says, a solemn promise, those three little words holding more weight than they have any right to. “I will be.” He pulls James into a kiss, firm but gentle, and so full of love James can feel it in his toes.

_____


End file.
